A Badge of Submission

The ocean of her own sexual exhaustion was deep and merciful. Katherine drifted in its dark currents, her mind blissfully blank, adrift from the horror and the shame. She was floating, untethered from the memory of the dildo, the taste of the boot, the shattering orgasms that had been torn from her body. But the scent of acrid smoke, sharp and insistent, cut through the fog like a knife. She sneezed, the violent contraction of her diaphragm yanking her back into the awful reality of the present day.

Her eyes snapped open. Jamie was there, sitting in the plush armchair, watching her with an unnerving stillness. She was changed, back in her faded jeans and a simple black T-shirt, the latex dominatrix gone, replaced by the chillingly casual young woman who had betrayed her. A cigarette smoldered between her fingers.

"Wakey wakey, little piggy," Jamie said, her voice light, almost friendly. "Fun's over now; you have work to do."

Katherine pushed herself up, her muscles screaming in protest. She felt raw, used, and hollowed out. Her eyes fell on a pile of her own clothes at the foot of the bed. On top of them were her warrant card, a symbol of a life that felt a million miles away, and two phones. One was hers. The other was the burner.

"I need to piss," Katherine said, her voice a hoarse, croaking thing. It wasn't a request; it was a statement of fact.

"Go for it." Jamie gestured with her cigarette towards a door in the corner of the room.

There was no dignified way to do this. No point in trying to hide her naked, bruised body. Katherine slid off the bed and walked past Jamie, her shoulders back, forcing a mask of indifference. She felt Jamie's eyes on her, a physical weight, and she caught the ghost of a smirk on the other woman's face. It took a shocking amount of Katherine's fractured self-control not to lunge, to attack, to do something.

When she returned, Jamie was stubbing out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray. The woman watched in silence as Katherine dressed, her gaze appraising, admiring. "Well-kept, aren't you? Gym-fit. You will be fun to break," she murmured, almost to herself. The words were a promise of future torment.

"Keep that phone with you at all times, little piggy. Any more than three rings and there will be consequences. Do you understand?" Jamie's voice was flat, cold.

Katherine just grunted, a guttural sound of defiance.

The slap was so fast she never saw it coming. It cracked against her cheek, a stunning explosion of pain that sent her stumbling sideways, crashing to the floor. Before she could process the fall, Jamie was on her. Her booted foot stamped down on Katherine's chest, the pressure immense, pinning her to the carpet. The speed was inhuman.

"Look at me, little piggy." Katherine’s eyes flew open, blazing with a sharp, pure hatred. Jamie met that hate with a smile and twisted the steel heel of her boot directly into the center of Katherine's breastbone, grinding bone and tissue. "We fucking own you, bitch. You'd better get that through your fucking thick piggy brain. We own you and your piggy daddy." She leaned down, her face inches from Katherine's, the pressure increasing until Katherine gasped for air. "I would suggest you take a look at the files on that phone. And then you text the first number on it with the words 'I understand, Mistress'."

The pain was blinding, but Katherine managed a jerky nod. Jamie lessened the pressure on her heel slightly, sliding the dirty sole of her boot up to Katherine's face. She didn't press, just let it rest there. "Kiss it, piggy. Let me know you understand."

Resignation wasn't a choice; it was a tidal wave. Tears welled, hot and humiliating. She had to play their game. She puckered her lips and pressed a soft, disgusting kiss onto the grimy sole of Jamie's boot. The taste of pavement and submission was foul on her tongue.

"Good piggy." Jamie removed her boot. "Now get the fuck out of my sight, useless little piggy. Trot along." She snickered at her own joke as Katherine scrambled up, grabbing her things.

It took everything Katherine had not to run from the room. She walked, each step a monumental effort of will. Soon she was in the sanctuary of her Audi A6, the heavy door slamming shut and enclosing her in a cocoon of sterling silence. She started the powerful engine, the rumble a distant thunder to the storm inside her. A glance at the clock sent a fresh jolt of panic through her: five p.m. She'd been gone all day. Her personal phone was lit with a dozen messages from work, queries, demands for updates. She sent back a generic, apologetic text about a "personal emergency," the words tasting like betrayal. All she wanted was to go home, to scrub this day from her skin, from her soul.

She looked down at the burner phone on the passenger seat. "Look at the files on it," Jamie had said. She picked it up, then threw it back down in revulsion. That can wait. She checked her mirror and pulled out, a desperate woman fleeing the scene of her own undoing.